Richard Campanella, Professor of Geography at Tulane School of Architecture and author of the monthly Cityscapescolumn at Nola.com, sits down with News Director Eve Troeh for their monthly interview.
This month Campanella talks about how and why New Orleans was divided into three municipalities in the 1830s due to cultural differences of its many populations.
The first municipality was today's French Quarter, from Canal to Esplanade; the second was The Warehouse District, from Canal to Felicity Street; and the third was from Esplanade down to the Lower Ninth Ward up to St. Bernard Parish. Campanella says the division represents, "the use of political geography to resolve ethnic fighting." He believes this rarely works today, and says it didn't work back than either.
The two cultures struggling to live together were older, native-born, Catholic Creoles and the incoming Anglo-Irish American population. Campanella says they did everything differently: law, politics, religion, and language and this caused them to struggle to understand one another and to live amongst one another.
But maintaining separate systems to accommodate these differences proved inefficient, and actually increased a sense of competition between the groups for city resources. "In 1852 The State Legislature amended an act to dissolve the three municipalities and reunify the city," he says. However, it also annexed the adjacent Jefferson Parish City of Lafayette. By doing this, it made the Anglo-American vote that was in the numerical majority which led to Americans winning elections.
Campanella goes into explaining the meaning and significance of the term "neutral ground" during this time. He describes the original "neutral ground" as meaning and area around Lake Charles, La., being between the French to the east and the Spanish to the west. This spread to people in New Orleans referring to the extra wide median on Canal Street as the "neutral ground" between the Creole and Anglo populations. "Thus the sense today, that people say that Canal St divided two populations," he says.